Home gardening plants seeds for Palestinian self-sufficiency

12 June 2020

With unemployment and poverty rates surging due to the coronavirus pandemic, Palestinians have returned to working their land, and vegetable gardens are sprouting alongside homes in the occupied territories.

One of the early initiatives arrived courtesy of the municipality of Beit Sahour, a town east of Bethlehem, which distributed a variety of vegetable and herb seedlings for residents to grow in their yards — including tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, onions, and potatoes. Some have already begun picking the produce to eat. The Palestinian Agriculture Ministry is supporting this self-sufficiency initiative, and has already distributed over a million seedlings.

This is not the first time that the Palestinian authorities have encouraged residents to grow their own vegetables during a time of economic hardship. A similar situation arose during the First Intifada, when there were high unemployment and poverty rates and Palestinians faced extended periods of closure and curfew. The Popular Committees and other political organizations at the time called on Palestinians to look after themselves and grow vegetables, and encouraged those in rural areas to raise chickens, cows, and goats in order to provide themselves with eggs, milk, and other dairy products. 

This phenomenon is not exclusive to Palestine — it resembles similar initiatives in Western countries during the 20th century’s world wars, in which citizens were encouraged to grow “victory gardens” in order to combat food shortages. According to estimates, at one point during World War II these gardens were responsible for around 40 percent of Americans’ food consumption.

The ARIJ Applied Research Institute in Bethlehem — an area that has been particularly hard-hit by the coronavirus crisis because of its reliance on tourism — also responded to the economic impact of the pandemic early on, by distributing 40,000 seedlings to residents. Nader Hrimat, ARIJ’s deputy director general who is also the director of the organization’s sustainable agriculture program, says that the Second Intifada made clear the need to “support small agriculturalists with home gardens.” That’s when people began receiving small plots of land next to their homes, Hrimat explains, along with training and tools for growing plants.

“We worked in three areas — Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem,” Hrimat continues. “Gradually, we began supporting the entire West Bank. We also developed small chicken coops, and allowed those who had them to begin selling to their neighbors.

“We also worked to protect rare Palestinian seeds and grew crops from traditional Palestinian dynasties, before distributing them to farmers,” he adds. 

Since ARIJ’s founding in 1990, Hrimat says, one of its main goals has been to safeguard agriculture and support small farmers. “We first investigate, and then introduce straightforward technology that is environmentally-friendly, trying it out with one farmer. If that’s successful, we then distribute the technology to all the other farmers,” he explains. 

As for those with no land adjacent to their homes, Hrimat says, the institute arranges for people to grow gardens on their roof. Initially consulting with an Irish expert in 2012, he says, they learned how to use water pipes without adding too much weight, and began growing cucumbers, tomatoes, cauliflower, and more — with the project becoming even more successful than its land-based predecessor.

“We didn’t want to use the occupiers’ equipment, so we developed our methods using equipment we found in the Palestinian market,” he says. “We also try to reduce costs for the grower by utilizing everything there is.”

In refugee camps, meanwhile, the institute is assisting with developing more sophisticated water systems and planters, according to different households’ capabilities. With the help of these interventions, Hrimat says, it’s possible to reduce water consumption by up to 60 percent. The institute has also distributed greenhouse nylon so that refugee camp residents can grow plants year-round, and not just seasonally. Moreover, he notes, “it’s all organic.”

He adds that the home agriculture being practiced in the occupied Palestinian territories is sufficient to meet a family’s needs. “The types of vegetables they are growing means they don’t need to purchase them. And now, in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, it’s our duty to plant on every inch [of land].”

‘We need to trust in ourselves’

Ahmad Zabun, 56, lives in Al ‘Aza refugee camp next to Bethlehem, although he is originally from the village Alar near Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank. He began planting vegetables 10 years ago in plastic balloons, styrofoam boxes and whatever else he could get his hands on. Now, following ARIJ’s initiative, he uses planters and has learned how to grow using water. 

“I encourage everyone to grow vegetables. From a political standpoint it’s important. If Israel closes the borders tomorrow, we’ll die of hunger. We need to rely on ourselves.”

Zabun grows vegetables, greens, fruits and herbs, and it’s enough for his family of five, he says. “But I live in a building with my brothers — another five families — and they also eat food from my roof. Even my neighbors take some of my herbs.

“There’s nothing like waking up in the morning, picking tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini, and preparing breakfast,” Zabun continues. “It’s also amazing to watch the vegetables grow. I’ve learned a lot by myself, and even bought aquarium pumps and adapted them to use agriculturally. I also try to grow at zero cost,” he adds, noting that he composts and rarely needs to use water. And his neighbors are taking note, coming to his roof garden to learn how to grow vegetables for themselves. 

Back to basics

“A month into the [pandemic], we sat down with six NGOs and planned out the private gardens,” ARIJ’s Hrimat says. “The hunger and frustration started after a month, and people didn’t know what to do. We were afraid that people would get sick of being under lockdown and that they’d start to go out, spreading the virus.

“We started in Bethlehem,” Hrimat continues. “We told the Minister of Agriculture that we’d start working on this, then connected with Palestinian nurseries. We actually received donations of 90,000 seedlings and 66 pounds of seeds. Each family got 100 seedlings and three sacks of different kinds of seeds, and fertilizer and irrigation systems which we provided, and we taught them how to grow.” Refugee camps received 50 percent of the supplies, Hrimat adds.

Over 2,000 people registered for the initiative after they published it on Facebook, Hrimat says, and participants collected supplies from designated locations or had volunteers drop them off at their homes. 

“People went back to basics, and that helped them emotionally,” Hrimat continues. “Suddenly there’s a garden on the roof, there’s somewhere to breathe, something to keep you busy. It also strengthened familial and neighborly relationships. People sent us pictures of entire buildings full of neighbors growing their vegetables together, which was very moving.”

Hrimat describes another initiative in Beit Sahour, in which young volunteers planted vegetables on land belonging to the Christian waqf (religious foundation) — which they then distributed to needy families.

‘We’ve created alternative land’

Shatha Al’aza, 27, who lives in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem but is originally from the village of Beit Jibrin northwest of Hebron, volunteers at the Lajee Center, which caters to young people in the camp. Along with music, dabke (Palestinian folk dance), and soccer classes, the center also provides medical services, and hosts volunteers from abroad as well as local doctors. In 2014, Al’aza was invited to set up a conservation unit at the center.

“At first, I gave lectures to school students,” Al’aza says. “We set up our first composter and started recycling. Then, in collaboration with ARIJ, we began instructing residents on how to grow vegetables on their roof.”

Al’aza and her team carried out a trial run on the roof of the Lajee Center, planting a variety of vegetables. Yet the center is close to an Israeli army base, she says — and soldiers “kept throwing tear gas which damaged the vegetables.” In response, she says, her team covered the vegetables with greenhouse nylon to protect them.

After the test run, the center distributed vegetable seedlings to 40 different families in the refugee camp, as well as planters provided by ARIJ. 

“Our primary goal is for each family to have enough to eat,” Al’aza says. “The second goal, which is no less important for refugees, is to strengthen their connection to the land they lost. So we’ve created alternative land.”

Al’aza also wanted women to be involved with the project, she says. “As a woman and a refugee, it was important to me to build up the women [here] so they would have something useful to do, especially because most are homemakers who suffer from poverty. I wanted them to pass on their love of the land to the next generation.

“Land and agriculture are forms of cultural heritage,” Al’aza continues. “Most refugees in Aida came from rural areas and lost all their land. We have no control over the land, the air, the crossings, the water — nothing. We should at least have control over what we eat, and know that what we put in our stomach is food we grew.

“Currently 80 percent of our food comes from Israel, and it’s their leftovers.”

The cramped conditions in Aida refugee camp, and the lack of open spaces and yards, means that many roofs receive little sunlight, Al’aza says. Another issue is that many roofs are not solid enough to be able to support the weight of planters.

Nonetheless, more people have been approaching the Lajee Center since the coronavirus outbreak, and Al’aza has encouraged people to start growing vegetables by launching a competition to find the most beautiful roof garden. Now, she says, she’s starting another initiative: “leasing land for women to work on, and then splitting the profits from the vegetables we grow and sell.”

Source: +972 Magazine

Israel targets Hamas post in new air raids on Gaza Strip

6 July 2020

Aerial assault comes after rockets were fired towards Israel from the besieged enclave, Israeli army says.

Israel has said it carried out fresh air raids on the Gaza Strip in response to three alleged rockets fired from the besieged Palestinian enclave. 

No casualties were reported in the attacks late on Sunday that took place amid heightened tensions over Israel's widely criticised plan to illegally annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian media outlets said an Israeli fighter jet targeted a position belonging to Hamas, the group that administers the Gaza Strip, in the al-Zaytoun neighbourhood. Agricultural land in the area was also reportedly hit.

In a statement posted on Twitter, the Israeli army said a total of three rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, setting off air-raid sirens. 

It said one of the rockets was intercepted, while Israeli Channel 12 TV said the other two landed in open areas.

Israel has long held Hamas responsible for violence from Gaza, while Hamas says Israel is responsible for the state of anger and pressure inflicted on Gaza's residents because of the continued siege. Since 2008, Israel has waged three wars on the Gaza Strip, killing thousands of people.

In recent months, an informal ceasefire has largely been observed under which Israel has at times slightly eased its crippling blockade of the enclave.

But tensions have been rising as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he hopes to soon begin the annexation process, a controversial plan that has been denounced by much of the international community including UN experts who say such a move would be a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions. 

Hamas warned Israel late last month that its planned annexation amounted to a "declaration of war". 

On June 26, two rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, triggering a punitive Israeli air raid on Hamas installations in the Strip. On July 1, Netanyahu's target date to begin the annexation process, Hamas fired a volley of rockets into the sea as a warning to Israel not to go ahead with the move, according to reports.

Last week, Hamas and its rival party, the West Bank-based Fatah, announced in a rare joint news conference that they would work together to fight Israel's planned annexation.

The Israeli plan, which aims to annex all illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank - including the strategic Jordan Valley - amounts to one-third of the territory and is in line with a proposal by US President Donald Trump that also envisages a demilitarised Palestinian state on a patchwork of disjointed parts of the Palestinian territories. 

But the US plan falls far short of the aspirations of Palestinian leaders, who seek an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Trump's plan also seeks to disarm Hamas, which the US has designated as a "terrorist" organisation.

Some two million Palestinians live in Gaza, whose economy has suffered under years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts and sanctions by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Parallels between Minneapolis and Jerusalem are more than skin deep

Jonathan Cook

In a world of depleting resources and contracting economies, states are preparing for future uprisings by a growing underclass

Palestinians demonstrate against police brutality and in support of US protesters over the death George

Floyd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on 8 June (AFP)

It is hard to ignore the striking parallels between the recent scenes of police brutality in cities across the United States and decades of violence from Israel’s security forces against Palestinians. 

A video that went viral late last month of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killing a black man, George Floyd, by pressing a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes has triggered a fortnight of mass protests across the US – and beyond.

The footage was the latest disturbing visual evidence of a US police culture that appears to treat Black Americans as an enemy – and a reminder that rogue police officers are all too rarely punished. 

Floyd’s lynching by Chauvin as three other officers either looked on, or participated, has echoes of troubling scenes familiar from the occupied territories. Videos of Israeli soldiers, police and armed settlers beating, shooting and abusing Palestinian men, women and children have long been a staple of social media. 

The dehumanisation that enabled Floyd’s murder has been regularly on view in the occupied Palestinian territories. In early 2018 Israeli snipers began using Palestinians, including children, nurses, journalists and the disabled, as little more than target practice during weekly protests at a perimeter fence around Gaza imprisoning them. 

Widespread impunity

And just as in the US, the use of violence by Israeli police and soldiers against Palestinians rarely leads to prosecutions, let alone convictions. 

Floyd’s murder has shocked many white Americans into joining the protests. Hallaq’s murder, by contrast, has been ignored by the vast majority of Israelis

A few days after Floyd’s killing, an autistic Palestinian man, Iyad Hallaq – who had a mental age of six, according to his family – was shot seven times by police in Jerusalem. None of the officers has been arrested.

Faced with embarrassing international attention in the wake of Floyd’s murder, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a rare statement on the killing of a Palestinian by the security services. He called Hallaq’s murder “a tragedy” and promised an investigation. 

The two killings, days apart, have underscored why the slogans “Black Lives Matter” and “Palestinian Lives Matter” sit naturally alongside each other, whether at protests or in social media posts. 

There are differences between the two cases, of course. Nowadays Black Americans have citizenship, most can vote (if they can reach a polling station), laws are no longer explicitly racist, and they have access to the same courts – if not always the same justice – as the white population. 

معتز أبوريدة _غزة @Abuabraa2110198

In Palestine.
We can’t breathe.#BlackLivesMatter
#PalestinianLivesMatter

That is not the situation for most Palestinians under Israeli rule. They live under occupation by a foreign army, arbitrary military orders govern their lives, and they have very limited access to any kind of meaningful legal redress. 

And there is another obvious difference. Floyd’s murder has shocked many white Americans into joining the protests. Hallaq’s murder, by contrast, has been ignored by the vast majority of Israelis, apparently accepted once again as the price of maintaining the occupation.

Treated like an enemy

Nonetheless, comparisons between the two racist policing cultures are worth highlighting. Both spring from a worldview shaped by settler-colonial societies founded on dispossession, segregation and exploitation. 

Israel still largely views Palestinians as an enemy that needs to be either expelled or made to submit. Black Americans, meanwhile, live with the legacy of a racist white culture that until not so long ago justified slavery and apartheid. 

Israel still largely views Palestinians as an enemy that needs to be either expelled or made to submit

Palestinians and Black Americans have long had their dignity looted; their lives too often are considered cheap. 

Sadly, most Israeli Jews are in deep denial about the racist ideology that underpins their major institutions, including the security services. Tiny numbers protest in solidarity with Palestinians, and those that do are widely seen by the rest of the Israeli public as traitors.

Many white Americans, on the other hand, have been shocked to see how quickly US police forces – faced with widespread protests – have resorted to aggressive crowd-control methods of the kind only too familiar to Palestinians. 

Those methods include the declaration of curfews and closed areas in major cities; the deployment of sniper squads against civilians; the use of riot teams wearing unmarked uniforms or balaclavas; arrests of, and physical assaults on, journalists who are clearly identifiable; and the indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets to wound protesters and terrify them off the streets. 

It does not end there.

President Donald Trump has described demonstrators as "terrorists", echoing Israel’s characterisation of all Palestinian protest, and threatened to send in the US army, which would replicate even more precisely the situation faced by Palestinians. 

Like Palestinians, the US black community – and now the protesters – have been recording examples of their abuse on their phones and posting the videos on social media to highlight the deceptions of police statements and media reporting of what has been taking place. 

Tested on Palestinians 

None of these parallels should surprise us. For years US police forces, along with many others around the world, have been queueing at Israel’s door to learn from its decades of experience in crushing Palestinian resistance. 

Israel has capitalised on the need among western states, in a world of depleting resources and the long-term contraction of the global economy, to prepare for future internal uprisings by a growing underclass. 

Women For Palestine@WomenForPal

What happened for George Floyd in #USA , is happening with Palestinians everyday..#PalestinianLivesMatter #Act4Palestine

With readymade laboratories in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel has long been able to develop and field-test on captive Palestinians new methods of surveillance and subordination. As the largest underclass in the US, urban black communities were always likely to find themselves on the front line as US police forces adopted a more militarised approach to policing. 

These changes finally struck home during the protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 after a black man, Michael Brown, was killed by police. Dressed in military-style fatigues and body armour, and backed by armoured personnel carriers, local police looked more like they were entering a war zone than there to "serve and protect". 

Trained in Israel

It was then that human rights groups and others started to highlight the extent to which US police forces were being influenced by Israel’s methods of subjugating Palestinians. Many forces had been trained in Israel or involved in exchange programmes. 

Israel’s notorious paramilitary Border Police, in particular, has become a model for other countries. It was the Border Police that shot dead Hallaq in Jerusalem shortly after Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. 

The Border Police carry out the hybrid functions of a police force and an army, operating against Palestinians in the occupied territories and inside Israel, where a large Palestinian minority live with a very degraded citizenship. 

The institutional premise of the Border Police is that all Palestinians, including those who are formally Israeli citizens, should be dealt with as an enemy. It is at the heart of a racist Israeli policing culture identified 17 years ago by the Or Report, the country’s only serious review of its police forces. 

The Border Police increasingly look like the model US police forces are emulating in cities with large black populations.

US police officers arrive at the Israeli police academy at Beit Shemesh on 10 September,2019 (Israeli Police)

Many dozens of Minneapolis police officers were trained by Israeli experts in “counter-terrorism” and “restraint” techniques at a conference in Chicago in 2012. 

Derek Chauvin’s chokehold, using his knee to press down on Floyd’s neck, is an “immobilisation” procedure familiar to Palestinians. Troublingly, Chauvin was training two rookie officers at the time he killed Floyd, passing on the department’s institutional knowledge to the next generation of officers. 

Monopoly of violence

These similarities should be expected. States inevitably borrow and learn from each other on matters most important to them, such as repressing internal dissent. The job of a state is to ensure it maintains a monopoly of violence inside its territory. 

Many white Americans have been shocked to see how quickly US police forces have resorted to aggressive crowd-control methods of the kind only too familiar to Palestinians

It is the reason why the Israeli scholar Jeff Halper warned several years ago in his book War Against the People that Israel had been pivotal in developing what he called a “global pacification” industry. The hard walls between the military and the police have crumbled, creating what he termed “warrior cops”. 

The danger, according to Halper, is that in the long run, as the police become more militarised, we are all likely to find ourselves being treated like Palestinians. Which is why a further comparison between the US strategy towards the black community and Israel’s towards Palestinians needs highlighting. 

The two countries are not just sharing tactics and policing methods against protests once they break out. They have also jointly developed longer-term strategies in the hope of dismantling the ability of the black and Palestinian communities they oppress to organise effectively and forge solidarity with other groups.  

Loss of historic direction

If one lesson is clear, it is that oppression can best be challenged through organised resistance by a mass movement with clear demands and a coherent vision of a better future. 

Palestine Online@PalOnlineTeam

Tonight in Bethlehem, Palestine in solidarity and strength with our brothers and sisters in the US We feel your pain. #BlackLivesMattter #PalestinianLivesMatter #NoJusticeNoPeace

In the past that depended on charismatic leaders with a fully developed and well-articulated ideology capable of inspiring and mobilising followers. It also relied on networks of solidarity between oppressed groups around the world sharing their wisdom and experience.

The Palestinians were once led by figures who commanded national support and respect, from Yasser Arafat to George Habash and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The struggle they led was capable of galvanising supporters around the world.

The Israeli scholar Jeff Halper warned several years ago that Israel had been pivotal in developing what he called a “global pacification” industry

These leaders were not necessarily united. There were debates over whether Israeli settler colonialism would best be undermined through secular struggle or religious fortitude, through finding allies among the oppressor nation or defeating it using its own violent methods.

These debates and disagreements educated the wider Palestinian public, clarified the stakes for them, and provided a sense of a historic direction and purpose. And these leaders became figureheads for international solidarity and revolutionary fervour.

That has all long since disappeared. Israel pursued a relentless policy of jailing and assassinating Palestinian leaders. In Arafat’s case, he was confined by Israeli tanks to a compound in Ramallah before he was poisoned to death in highly suspicious circumstances. Ever since, Palestinian society has found itself orphaned, adrift, divided and disorganised.

International solidarity has been largely sidelined too. The publics of Arab states, already preoccupied with their own struggles, appear increasingly tired of the divided and seemingly hopeless Palestinian cause. And in a sign of our times, western solidarity today is invested chiefly in a boycott movement, which has had to wage its fight on the enemy’s battlefield of consumption and finance. 

From confrontation to solace

The black community in the US has undergone parallel processes, even if it is harder to indict quite so directly the US security services for the loss decades ago of a black national leadership. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panther movement were hounded by the US security services. They were jailed or felled by assassins, despite their very different approaches to the civil rights struggle. 

Today, none are around to make inspiring speeches and mobilise the wider public – either black or white Americans – to take action on the national stage.

Denied a vigorous national leadership, the organised black community at times appeared to have retreated into the safer but more confining space of the churches – at least until the latest protests. A politics of solace appeared to have replaced the politics of confrontation. 

A focus on identity

These changes cannot be attributed solely to the loss of national leaders. In recent decades the global political context has been transformed too. After the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, the US not only became the world’s sole superpower but it crushed the physical and ideological space in which political opposition could flourish. 

The US not only became the world’s sole superpower but it crushed the physical and ideological space in which political opposition could flourish 

Class analysis and revolutionary ideologies – a politics of justice – were shunted off the streets and increasingly into the margins of academia. 

Instead, western political activists were encouraged to dedicate their energies not to anti-imperialism and class struggle but to a much narrower identity politics. Political activism became a competition between social groups for attention and privilege. 

As with Palestinian solidarity activism, identity politics in the US has waged its battles on the terrain of a consumption-obsessed society. Hashtags and virtue-signalling on social media have often appeared to serve as a stand-in for social protest and activism. 

A moment of transition

The question posed by the current US protests is whether this timid, individualised, acquisitive kind of politics is starting to seem inadequate. The US protesters are still largely leaderless, their struggle in danger of being atomised, their demands implicit and largely shapeless – it is clearer what the protesters don’t want than what they do. 

We are caught in a moment of transition, it seems, destined for a new era – good or bad – we cannot discern clearly yet

That reflects a current mood in which the challenges facing us all – from permanent economic crisis and the new threat of pandemics to impending climate catastrophe – appear too big, too momentous to make sense of. We are caught in a moment of transition, it seems, destined for a new era – good or bad – we cannot discern clearly yet. 

In August, millions are expected to head to Washington in a march to echo the one led by Martin Luther King in 1963. The heavy burden of this historic moment is expected to be carried on the ageing shoulders of the Rev Al Sharpton. 

That symbolism may be fitting. It is more than 50 years since western states were last gripped with revolutionary fervour. But the hunger for change that reached its climax in 1968 – for an end to imperialism, endless war and rampant inequality – was never sated.

Oppressed communities around the globe are still hungry for a fairer world. In Palestine and elsewhere, those who suffer brutality, misery, exploitation and indignity still need a champion. They look to Minneapolis and the struggle it launched for a seed of hope.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/minneapolis-jerusalem-georgefloyd-Iyadhallaq-palestine-israel

‘Israel’ arrested 750 Palestinians in Jerusalem this year

31 May 2020

Ramallah (QNN)- Human rights resources said Israeli forces arrested over 750 native Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem this year so far.

The Prisoners’ association said in a statement issued on Sunday that Israeli forces have arrested over 750 native Palestinians from the Palestinian capital city since the start of 2020. The arrests included women, children, leaders, and activists.

The statement added that the occupation state hasn’t stopped arrests even with the spread of the coronavirus. over 300 Palestinians have been arrested since last March.

It also noted that the Israeli policy of systematic arrests in occupied Jerusalem aims to foil any activity that may support the resistance of Palestinians in the holy city or protect Al Aqsa mosque.

Several Jerusalemites have been arrested over ten times, while most of them got entry ban orders to Al Aqsa mosque or even to Jerusalem. House arrest was also imposed on hundreds of children in the city.

The association added that the Israelis deliberately rearrest prisoners the moment they get released to prevent them and their families from enjoying freedom.

SOURCE: Quds News Network

Knowing Becomes Understanding : 8 Days in Occupied Palestine

How can I express both the heartbreak and happiness I feel since spending eight days in occupied Palestine? How can I convey the paradoxical emotions of anger and joy ? How do I depict the ugliness and the beauty? Talking about it , to anyone who will listen ,has helped. Discussing our shared experiences with my daughter has helped . Perhaps writing about what I saw, heard, learnt and felt will help. I hope so.

I thought I was well prepared because I knew the history of the British Mandate, the 1947-1949 Nakba and the 1967 war. I knew that over one and a half million Palestinians were violently expelled and permanently displaced from their towns, villages and homes. I knew that many are still living as refugees within and outside their country . I was also well versed on the myriad of  Agreements, Conventions and International Laws that Israel continues to flout. I knew that the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 meant the loss of the homeland of the Palestinian people who continue to live under occupation.

No amount of reading, lectures or news coverage could have prepared me for the bitter reality. Knowing is not the same as understanding. It took just eight days of seeing, listening and feeling to begin to understand the catastrophe that Palestine has suffered and that its people continue to endure. It only took a few days to understand the profoundly racist narrative and the blatant system of apartheid perpetrated by Israel. I came to despise the ever present Wall , the most obvious symbol of segregation . Even more insidious however is the strategic , systemic and institutionalised discrimination exercised against Palestinians in all spheres of their life - economic, political, legal, social and communal. I could only conclude that Israel intentionally creates unlivable conditions , violates human rights and overtly supports the illegal settlement of Israelis on Palestinian land so that Palestinians will give up and leave. As a taxi driver in Tel Aviv boasted "by the time you return we would have got rid of every single Arab from our country. "

Most distressing of all, understanding came from listening to the stories of people who have experienced and continue to live with unimaginable injustices and indignities. Seared in my memory is a house in Jerusalem where we sat under a locqat tree with a grandfather and his granddaughter .The house is his but the family now lives in a small flat behind the house. He quietly recounted the day ,six years ago , when five Israeli men forced his family, at gunpoint, from their house. When he resisted , the men's actions were reinforced by the Israeli army. His 91 year old mother was badly beaten, as was he. A large wooden board , emblazoned with a Star of David, now stands at the entrance to his house. Court case after court case has been unsuccessful .As we received his generous hospitality, I understood that there are no controls and no repercussions for Israelis stealing houses that do not belong to them. Furthermore that this stealing is openly assisted by the Israeli army and state.

Understanding came from seeing, with my own eyes, the harassment and arrest of Palestinian teenagers for no reason other than to demonstrate naked Israeli power. At the majestic Damascus Gate I watched as Israeli soldiers descended from the grim watchtowers , a blight on this magnificent ancient entry to Jerusalem, swooped on some teenagers and at gunpoint took them away. These boys were sitting near us on the steps , eating dinner .  In that most heart rending of cities, Hebron, I again watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers grabbed a teenage boy who was walking down the street, threw him harshly against a wall and roughly searched him. I knew that this is a daily occurrence all over occupied Palestine, repeated many times over. But the full horror has to be seen to be understood and believed.

The vibrancy of Bethlehem, Nablus , Ramallah and Jericho with their exquisite old cities ,bustling souqs and welcoming people was a delightful surprise. My spirits plummeted however when confronted with the disturbing realities of the Aida and Balata Refugee Camps where generations of Palestinians have spent their lives. More than anything in those eight days, the Refugee Camps brought into clear focus the inherent immorality and hardship of occupation. This brief but intensely personal experience also helped me to understand the resilience and passion of a people who are living under the cruellest of circumstances. Faced with the section of the apartheid Wall that runs through Aida, I was moved by the messages of defiance and hope ,complemented by more recent cultural and creative forms of resistance practiced in Aida. 

Most poignant of all is the giant Key of Return at the entrance to Aida , proudly declaring the right of return of refugees and their descendants to their homes and lands. My own ceramic Key Of Return hangs proudly in my kitchen , a daily reminder of this vision and aspiration.

Christa Christaki